just wondering if the 522 is running well. how do the timers hold up? any lock ups? let me know if it would be a good buy.
curious how the 522 is running
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Runs good. No lock-ups here. A few missed timers due to same name of show, but nothing that would keep me from recommending it.
Some people have had drive issues. I'm on my second one. As long as you understand that whatever you record can someday magically disappear, you will be fine.
Some people have had drive issues. I'm on my second one. As long as you understand that whatever you record can someday magically disappear, you will be fine.
Surprisingly, it is working well, except for known behavioral bugs. I have an occasional stutter, but not enough to be bothersome.
It doesn't lock up anymore (except for the occassional getting 'stuck' for 15-20 seconds) and I cannot remember when it has 'forgotten' to record a timer.
It doesn't lock up anymore (except for the occassional getting 'stuck' for 15-20 seconds) and I cannot remember when it has 'forgotten' to record a timer.
I've had one for about 8-10 months now, and haven't had to have it replaced (knock on wood!). It was doing SO good after they implimemted NBR, but all day yesterday it had audio dropouts and A/V sync issues. No big deal though - so far today, it's been running okay.
I would definitly tell you to get one - it's a great box!
My ONLY complaint - you can't have it only record episodes that say "new" in the info. 'New' eps to the 522 mean shows made in 2005... so if I want to record new shows on say, VH1, it records basically 24/7!
I would definitly tell you to get one - it's a great box!
My ONLY complaint - you can't have it only record episodes that say "new" in the info. 'New' eps to the 522 mean shows made in 2005... so if I want to record new shows on say, VH1, it records basically 24/7!
I had Dish Network and the DVR-522 installed on Jan 3 and have experienced problems with playback on recorded programs.
The Audio signal is lost for a few seconds from time to time during playback.
This happens at least twice for every program I have recorded and is annoying.
I also have had pops in the audio 2-3 times now.
I get a few lines if video distortion from time to time. I have skipped back and then played forward again and the distortion is still there so it must have been recorded that way. I have not however seen any of these problems watching live TV.
The Video quality is degraded a little watching playback compared to live TV.
This is a New DVR-522 with the latest software. Should I contact Dish for a replacement or is this normal for this equipment?
I have read several older posts about what I believe are these same type of problems
but had the impression they were suppose to have been fixed last year.
The Audio signal is lost for a few seconds from time to time during playback.
This happens at least twice for every program I have recorded and is annoying.
I also have had pops in the audio 2-3 times now.
I get a few lines if video distortion from time to time. I have skipped back and then played forward again and the distortion is still there so it must have been recorded that way. I have not however seen any of these problems watching live TV.
The Video quality is degraded a little watching playback compared to live TV.
This is a New DVR-522 with the latest software. Should I contact Dish for a replacement or is this normal for this equipment?
I have read several older posts about what I believe are these same type of problems
but had the impression they were suppose to have been fixed last year.
Actually, they say the video quality of playback is supposed to be EXACTLY the same as live TV. The only noticeable difference should be those pixellation areas and audio dropouts.jtravel said:
No, you shouldn't call Dish to get a new box. If you call them, they'll say those are "known issues" and they're "working to resolve them" as soon as possible, but they don't give a date. Of course, it was supposed to be fixed about 2 months ago! But I guess just because it was 'supposed' to be fixed, doesn't mean it IS going to be! We just keep on watching TV and dealing with it. It's fine 98% of the time... (on my box anyway!)
Personally, I think I'm ready to call and request my box get downgraded back to 2.08... NBR is nice, but IMO my 522 was more fun to watch when I could record a 1 hr program _without_ 2-10 annoying block errors, audio 'pops' or freezes. It was also nice when it didn't randomly stop responding to the remote for 15-30 seconds while attempting to browse the guide. None of this stuff happened to me with 2.08. I like to archive recordings to dvd-r, and this has been mostly pointless since 2.32 because I can't seem to record a single show that doesn't display some form of corruption.
phat_bastard said:
Yeah, good luck with that.
Overall, I've seen an improvement in playback quality. I was having a problem with the guide on Friday, I kept getting "Info Not Available" and couldn't force a guide download. As a result, I missed two timers on Friday night.
I don't think the block errors, audio pops and freezes have anything to do with version 2.32. I've seen all of these problems with every software version since 1.6x. I believe this is more due to the hardware not being able to keep up with demands of the software. It seems with each additional feature added to the software the old problems continue and new problems pop up. Also, as your hard drive fills up you tend to see more playback problems.phat_bastard said:
So far so good with my 522. Timers fire every time and NBR works as advertised. The DVR functionality is a little glitchy sometimes when it comes to skip back/forward not in sync/delayed slightly but not bad enough to prevent you from using the functionaligy, more annoying than anything if that.
maximum said:
I have to at least partially disagree. Of the ~60 hours of programs I recorded with 2.08 and then captured and recorded to DVD-R, one show had a single audio chirp in it. I captured it several times, so I'm relatively sure that it was written to the DVR's hdd that way. As I recall, my box got 2.31 prior to a sunday when I had several timers scheduled. Even with 80 hours of free space, nothing that was recorded on that sunday or monday evening was even remotely viewable. 2.32 vastly reduced the problem, and the unit 'felt' much more responsive to the remote, but the shows that were recorded with 2.31 were still as bad as before the update, indicating that they were written to disk that way. Knowing that there were no other variables, the change to 2.3X from 2.08 was like night and day. My wife noticed it, even my 8 year old noticed it (granted he noticed it on a 500 watt, 80 inch projection system).
Without having a shell on the box it's hard to tell exactly where the bottlenecks are, but having a little experience with embedded linux appliances I can assure you that the DVR applications and kernel's overall efficiency will dramatically impact the box's ability to handle interrupts - i.e. remote inputs, hard disk reads / writes, codec i/o, etc. I would also hypothesize that the increase of symptoms ppl have been reporting as the drive fills up is directly related to the filesystem becoming fragmented, making it harder for the unit to read + write the streams without buffer underruns.
In a nutshell, the box is either grossly underpowered for the task that 2.3x is forcing upon it, or the applications and kernel have simply not been optimized to the point where they're ready to run on the intended hardware. Considering that the unit needs enough disk bandwidth to read two mpeg2 streams while writing two mpeg2 streams (assuming each stream is ~3mbps), and knowing the performance capabilities of your average 120 gb ide hdd, that alone leaves little margin for error and requires very intelligent buffering / memory management. Couple that with a low power processor, a modest amount of memory, marginal memory bandwidth, etc. and it should be obvious how important efficient firmware is. I also think it's safe to assume that environmental conditions such as an overheated hard drive would serve to amplify the limitations of the hardware, which would account for ppl having different overall experiences through multiple firmware updates.
I also have the audio problem on playback. Lose the audio for a second
or two. Seems to happen on every recorded show at least once.
Also if I hit the up channel, on the remote, a couple of times to fast, the
picture goes blank for up to 30 seconds or more before returning.
It also would be nice to be able to see what tuner(1 or 2) you were
watching. I use single mode on my 522.
or two. Seems to happen on every recorded show at least once.
Also if I hit the up channel, on the remote, a couple of times to fast, the
picture goes blank for up to 30 seconds or more before returning.
It also would be nice to be able to see what tuner(1 or 2) you were
watching. I use single mode on my 522.
Our brand new unit with nothing recorded continues to exhibit very brief instances of audio drop out followed by brief checkboarding on newly recorded programming. I know its on the recorded version because its reproducable on playback of the same scene. Watching live programming the unit exhibits no indications of that problem. I'm tempted to put a stop watch since there seems to be a pattern with the unit recording x amount of minutes, a hicup, then ok for another x amount of minutes.
Right now we run the unit in dual mode and all recordings are done on tuner 2. The problems occur even if tuner 2 is the only unit operating.
This reminds me of a Go Video DVD/VCR player that I own that has problems transitioning layers on a DVD. I went through three of them and couldn't find one that didn't burp when going to a different layer.
Jack
Right now we run the unit in dual mode and all recordings are done on tuner 2. The problems occur even if tuner 2 is the only unit operating.
This reminds me of a Go Video DVD/VCR player that I own that has problems transitioning layers on a DVD. I went through three of them and couldn't find one that didn't burp when going to a different layer.
Jack
Mine runs great now that I've pulled the plug and threw it over in the corner. I couldn't take the endless list of problems that have been mentioned above any longer. Not to mention the fact that it 'cleaned' the hard drive 3 times without letting me know about it. All together it's deleted about 30 hours of programming without giving me an option not to. The a/v hiccups, random timer drops, random hard drive formats, random non responsive remote issues, random reboots, random signal drops were finally just too much. I wish everyone luck, but I just don't feel like E* is really working towards a fix. I gave it 10 months and paid them $57/month to let me be a beta tester. How dumb was that?
Pablo_New said:
PC
Check out my post in this thread:
http://www.satelliteguys.us/showthread.php?t=43085
Be warned, the process is fairly time consuming, especially the part of authoring the dvd. I like to capture about 60 gigs of material at a time and edit and author the dvds in my spare time. I'm anal enough to spend time making menus for multi-episode dvds - some ppl aren't. If you want it done quick and dirty go the dvd recorder route. The big challenge for me was getting the capture pc tweaked out to the point where I could grab D-1 resolution and compress it to mpeg-2 in realtime without dropping frames.
